Saturday, 28 November 2015

I am pretty late with this month's tag however this is due to my absolutely loving the background technique and I have been using it on a number of projects, so be warned you are going to get fed up seeing it !!!!

As usual you can see all the details for Tim's tag HERE. Amazingly for once I had all the individual elements!

Once I had created the Paint Resist I used Old Paper Distress Ink and the Wrinkle Free Technique as I wanted something a little lighter. Ground Espresso provided a lovely contrast edging and also darkened my very light cork.I don't have many Distress Markers, so my pumpkin was painted with Distress Inks: Carved Pumpkin, Fossilised Amber and Rusty Hinge. A very enjoyable tag to make and finished last night whilst enjoying a glass of wine - it doesn't get much better!Enjoy the rest of the weekend.Jennie x

Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Having enjoyed my day with Michelle Webb I then spent Sunday in a workshop with Andy Skinner. I have wanted to try his rusting techniques for a long long time, so I was very excited - and of course I was not disappointed!

We made front and back covers for a book, painting them first and then adding the crackle. Whilst that was drying we spent tie rusting all the individual cogs and wheels with paints, texture and crackle.

Don't you just love that crackle!!!! I love there way you can also add a wash over the top too which meant everyone's books were a different colour.

Had to give you a close up!

And a close up of some of the rusting.

Another wonderful day! Thank you Andy for such a wonderfully organised workshop. It really was fabulous experience.

So Deco Art products here we come - needless to say I came home with a few!

At long last I have been able to photograph and blog the wonderful pieces I made at the Mixology 101 Event in Coventry a couple of weeks ago. I had an amazing time, met some wonderful people and caught up with old friends too. Thank you everyone for making me so welcome and a huge round of applause for Di and Tony Oliver of Tando Creations for their organisation of the event.

So … my first day was a workshop with Michelle Webb, someone I have long admired. We created this wonderfully colourful mixed media shadow box.

This was my first experience of working with Deco Art products and we used a lot! I love the Crackle Paint and the gorgeous bright colours of the Fluid Acrylics.

My beach huts looked pretty awful when I first started painting them (in fact I felt totally ashamed of them!). But by the time they had the stamping and paints added they appeared reasonably passable!

Here you can see the depth of the pieces we were working with.This was so much fun and very different for me! Thank you so much Michelle x

Monday, 9 November 2015

Hello everyone! and time for my second project for this month's blue challenge at Country View Challenges. I just love this photograph taken during my trip to New York earlier this year and wanted a layout which didn't compete with it.

I actually created the layout while on our Shetland Scrapbookers weekend and only had limited supplies with me, which is sometimes a good thing! but had I been home I might have used some different (darker) blues.

I started with a mixed media background using white texture paste through a number of layering stencils and then added inks, stamping and layered papers. Basically what was in my bag, grabbed at the last minute before leaving the house.

I thought the lovely lady needed some flowers so made these using Hickory Smoke Distress Ink.

You have plenty of time to join us in our challenge and hop on over to the CVC blog for some fabulous inspiration so far this month and more to come over the next couple of weeks.Have a great week!

To be honest I am not a great lover of fireworks unless I am behind glass as a rocket landed in my hair many years ago as a child which was quite a frightening experience. But I do love watching all the wonderful colours lighting up the sky at this time of the year. So I decided to recreate the wonderful clusters of firework colours by using Tim's Rosette Die (when did you last get that one out!).

I used black gesso on some greyboard and also mixed black gesso into some texture paste to imitate a firework sparkly sky. Some splatters of white gesso and some star remnant rubs added to the night sky background.

I painted strips of white cardstock with Rusty Hinge and Barn Door Distress Paints before making the rosettes. I pulled the paint in one direction along the paper and the rosettes do look as though they are spinning (like Catherine Wheels), although this is quite hard to photograph!

I managed to cut off the tops of some glass pins for the centres of the rosettes - hard work but they do add a little bit of sparkle!

I do hope you have some fun creating some wonderful fireworks for our challenge. Do hop on over to A Vintage Journey for details of the challenge and to see how the rest of the Creative Guides have interpreted this challenge. I promise you there is an amazing array of different projects.

Sunday, 1 November 2015

Welcome everyone to my second post of today - it being the first of the month! This time it is to share the new challenge at Our Creative Corner which is

We often try to do the things the right way, use the suitable thing, organise our creations following definite lines or intentions …. sometimes it doesn't go the way we wanted it to and sometimes it goes in the bin, but sometimes we discover something new …. and we love it! So at OCC we want you to play, whether it is upside down, inverted, reversed or escaping from the right order, whatever you decide, let us see your topsy turvey creation and how it came to life in your hands.For my topsy turvey challenge I decided to change the order of the way I create my backgrounds. I normally create them in the order of: Gesso, Texture Paste, Inks/Sprays and then stamp text. So for this tag I did the reverse: stamped the text, added Distress Inks using the wrinkle free distress technique, added texture paste and then covered it all with gesso. And I LOVE the result which is quite different.

And I didn't exactly use subtle colours!

I didn't want to lose too much of the background so I decorated it lightly with another tag created in the same way and some white and cream embellishments.

Thank you Lys for a GREAT challenge making us think outside the box and play!

I hope my tag and the rest of my DT teamies projects will inspire you to have a go at this great challenge. Click HERE to hop on over to OCC to see all the team's amazing projects and details of the challenge.

Deco Art are our sponsors for this month and a fabulous prize on offer: A Decoart Media Sampler Kit and Andy is including a few of his stencils too.

Wow! what a great prize!

Thank you for joining me again today and I hope you have a great weekend.

Well not just me … the whole DT at Country View Challenges in fact as the colour blue is our new challenge theme for the month of November.

I started with an array of Distress Inks in blue hues - Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky, Blueprint Sketch, Faded Jeans and Chipped Sapphire - and some old favourite stamps not used in a while. I stamped randomly over the background of the tag and really thought it was awful. So rather than throw it in the bin I covered the whole lot with a thin coating of gesso and ……… loved it! As I've used Distress Ink it has smudged a bit but I quite like the effect.

I recently decided to bin a few of my very early tags and managed to salvage some bits and pieces, so the buttons, tape, film strip and pin are all recycled which actually makes me feel really good! so not blue at all !

A simple little tag for our challenge theme but it will probably get turned into a birthday card at some point.Do hop on over to Country View Challenges for some amazing projects from the rest of the team and I do hope you will find time to join us. Watch out for more projects through the month from all of us too - just in case you need a little inspiration.Have a great day and thank you for joining me this morning. I'll be back soon …………….

About Me

Live the Dream is all about my creative journey which seems to be continually evolving!
My style is shabby vintage mixed media and I am passionate about making my own flower embellishments. I love sharing my work either in tutorials here and on Design Team blogs and also at workshops here in Shetland.
Where will it lead me next I wonder - wherever or whatever I know I am living the dream!